


I Was In the Darkness So Darkness I Became

by celeste9



Series: The Darkness Here Is Me [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Brainwashing, Established Relationship, Flying, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, Plotty, Presumed Dead, Space Battles, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 16:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6058573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Poe is captured by the First Order, the entire Resistance believes him to be dead. Everyone except for Rey, who can't make herself accept it. She would know if he was dead. </p><p>She's right, but the fate that's befallen Poe might be even worse than dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Was In the Darkness So Darkness I Became

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: intense depiction of brainwashing, reference to interrogation techniques on par with what was in TFA
> 
> Written for the h/c bingo February amnesty challenge, which was to write a postage stamp. My prompts were: fall from grace, sensory deprivation, CPR/rescue breathing, and a wild card (I used brainwashing/deprogramming). At first I despaired of ever making those prompts go together but then this idea happened, and the story practically wrote itself, and I really hope you like it. :) I’ve taken some slight liberties for sake of the plot, for instance, single-manned TIE fighters apparently aren’t equipped with hyperdrives, but just bear with me. Consider it artistic license. *g* With many thanks to deinonychus_1 for doing the beta. Title from Florence + the Machine.

Poe wakes up in a cell, upright, restrained, his head throbbing. The whole situation is distressingly familiar. Finn - no, Finn is fine. Finn got out. He remembers. Finn is fine. Finn is safe.

That part’s different at least.

Poe tugs at his restraints, mostly to appease his desire for defiance rather than out of any belief he could actually break free from the shackles. He’s been a guest on a Star Destroyer before. He knows how it goes.

He almost wishes they’d left a guard inside the room so he could see if he couldn’t use the Force to get out of this, like Rey had done on the Starkiller Base. Who knows, he could turn out to be a Jedi, too. Enough people had told him he flew like Luke Skywalker, that was for sure.

Secret Jedi or not, however, Poe is alone with no one to try out his potential mind tricks on, and unfortunately, he also knows how it goes when dark figures in masks enter the room.

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” Poe says. “You’d make a guy think you’ve got a crush on him or something.”

Kylo Ren’s mask is impervious. “Humor. That’s good. I wonder how long it will last.”

“My dad always lamented my smart mouth, so I figure, longer than it’ll take for you to get sick of me.”

“Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that indeed.”

It only takes four seconds for Poe to begin to scream.

-

Rey leaves her training session with Luke in rather an excellent mood, smiling at Snap in the hall as she passes him. She’s sore but she absently touches the lightsaber hanging at her hip and thinks she might put in some extra time with the remotes anyway. Just for fun, you know.

Karé comes racing down the hall towards Rey, zipping up her orange flightsuit over a black shirt as she runs, her braids swinging. “Hi, Rey! Bye, Rey!”

“Let me guess, you’re late?”

“Just when I learn the routine it changes on me, you know how it is.”

“I think your problem is expecting there to actually ever be a routine. We still on for sabacc?”

“Absolutely,” Karé calls as she jogs backwards. “Can’t wait to beat you!”

“You can try,” Rey says, grinning.

She has only just left Karé behind when she catches a glimpse of orange and white, of a brown jacket, out of the corner of her eye and starts running down the hall herself, turning the corner. “Finn!”

If Finn and BB-8 are back then that means Poe is, too, and maybe she’ll forget the remotes, after all. They've been gone longer than expected and Rey might have started to worry, just a little bit.

Finn stops and turns, BB-8 rolling to a stop beside him.

“Did you just get back? Where’s Poe?” Rey’s smile fades at the expression on Finn’s face. “Finn, where’s Poe? _Where is he?_ ”

BB-8 peers from around Finn’s calves and answers her, tremulously.

Rey wonders if this is what dying feels like.

-

Everything is darkness. Poe doesn’t know how long he’s been here. They’ve put some sort of mask on him, so that he can’t see or hear anything. His limbs ache constantly from being locked in the same position and he’s rubbed all the skin off his wrists from fruitless attempts at breaking out of the restraints.

Every so often they give him water, or a bit of protein so he doesn’t die. He isn’t sure why they bother. He isn’t sure why he isn’t dead already. 

This feels sort of like death, anyway. Or at least, it’s what he imagines death must be like. Endless nothingness. No light. No color. No sound. No touch. No feeling. Just… nothing.

It’s driving him a bit mad. He gave up talking to himself some time ago. It’s difficult even to have a conversation with yourself when you can’t hear what you have to say.

He imagines escaping. He imagines that he’s able to get out of his restraints and he overpowers the guards in the corridor. He steals a weapon, he steals a ship. He’s done it before. Sure, he had inside help, but he could do it. He only needs to figure out how to get free.

The Force would come in really handy right about now, he’s just saying.

He pictures Rey and Finn in his mind, pictures their faces. He thinks of their warm smiles, and the way they feel in his arms. He thinks of coming back to them. 

Part of him knows he likely never will, but Poe has never given up easily. He clings to the hope that they will see each other again because it’s the only thing he has left.

Sometimes he imagines that they will come for him. He fears it, because he doesn’t want them to be hurt, and he doesn’t see how they could ever find him without getting hurt. Or killed. But he imagines it, because he wants to get _out._ He imagines it because he knows them, and he knows they would never give up, no matter how dangerous or impossible it was.

They’ll come for him. Poe just has to survive long enough for them to get here.

He isn’t dead yet. There must be a reason.

They stopped asking him questions a long time ago.

-

The Resistance base is on high alert, a constant rush of movement and activity. They’re getting ready to move. General Organa and the admirals can’t take the chance that Poe gave them up. They had planned on having months yet before relocation but it won’t be the first time plans have needed an unexpected adjustment.

They’re leaving, but no one is dedicating any effort to finding Poe.

This is wrong. 

“Why isn’t anyone doing anything?” Rey asks Finn. “Why aren’t we searching for Poe? We have to find him!”

Finn looks at her like she’s missed something, like she’s missed something entirely, and he doesn’t want to be the one to tell her but knows he has to, anyway. 

“Poe is dead, Rey.”

His words send a shiver down Rey’s spine. “He isn’t. How could you even say that?”

“I don’t want it to be true either, but it is. He’s dead and we need to accept that.”

“He isn’t dead! I would know; I would’ve felt it.” She would have felt it. Poe, it was Poe. His death would have resonated for her; it would have. She would be able to sense his absence; she knows how these things work. 

Everyone keeps telling her how powerful she is. She would _know._

“Rey, they knew who Poe was. They would have brought him to Kylo Ren like a prize, and Ren will have…” Finn closes his mouth, like he can’t even finish the thought.

“That doesn’t mean they killed him. Did you see them kill him? You said… You said…”

“Kylo Ren isn’t in the business of keeping prisoners. Poe doesn’t have anything Ren wants. He probably tortured him for information, for our location, and then-- Poe was a problem. I only hope it was quick.”

Rey stares at Finn helplessly. It can’t be true.

“I know how the First Order works. He’s gone, Rey. He’s gone.”

“No,” Rey says, tears falling down her cheeks. “He can’t be; I would have _felt_ it! It was Poe, how could I not have felt it?”

“I’m sorry,” Finn says, and he holds her, but he’s crying, too.

Rey wants to rage at him, wants to make him do _something,_ but she just sits there, useless, clinging to Finn like he’s all she has left. He is. He is all she has left.

If Poe is dead and she didn’t even know, then he’s just gone like he didn’t matter, like he wasn’t… Like he wasn’t…

Rey lets her fury and her loss build inside of her and she holds onto it. She will use it. She knows what Luke would say but she doesn’t care.

When she meets Kylo Ren again, she will use it.

-

When the mask comes off, it’s almost worse. Poe’s eyes hurt from even the dim light that floods into his field of vision. He closes his eyes again against the glare. It feels worse than the worst headache he’s ever had.

By the time he cracks an eye open again, the trooper who removed the mask is gone, and Poe is alone.

“Hey,” he says, voice croaking, just so he can remember what it feels like to hear a sound.

“Hey,” he says louder. “Hey!”

No one comes.

After that, Poe sees no one but Kylo Ren. 

Kylo Ren only ever asks him one question.

“Who are you?”

Sometimes he says, _Poe._ Sometimes he says, _the best pilot in the galaxy._ Sometimes he really pushes his luck and says, _the guy who blew up your superweapon,_ or _the guy who’s fucking those two kids who kicked your ass,_ or _the guy who’s gonna blow your face off when I get out of here._ You get the idea.

Sometimes he just spits in Kylo Ren’s face. He has to really work up to those occasions. He only gets enough water so he won’t die before they’re done with him.

None of these answers are answers that Kylo Ren likes. 

It hurts.

It hurts a lot.

Kylo Ren rarely tortures Poe physically, not anymore. Instead he reaches into Poe’s head. Sometimes it’s just pain, but sometimes it’s like he’s _digging,_ like he’s searching for what makes Poe _Poe_ and trying to rip it out from the roots.

Poe has no defense against this. He doesn’t know how to shield his thoughts, how to protect his own mind. When he tries he thinks he only makes it easier for Ren, draws attention to the very things he’s trying to protect.

He doesn’t have any information that Ren doesn’t already know but that never seems to matter. Kylo Ren isn’t searching for information anymore. He’s searching for ways to make Poe hurt.

He lingers on Poe’s mother a lot. Her death. Her absence from Poe’s life. Even the memories Poe has of her, Ren twists them, wrings the joy out of them and reminds Poe that she’s _gone,_ that she left him, that he couldn’t save her. 

“Your mommy issues are showing,” Poe tells him, and then he screams while it feels like Ren’s fingers are squeezing his brain inside his head.

Ren finds Rey and Finn in Poe’s head and his voice is cruel as he says, “You think they actually loved you. How sweet. But where are they? Are they here, coming to your rescue? Clearly not. They’ve forgotten all about you, because they never needed you.”

Poe spits at Kylo Ren’s mask but it’s his worst fear, Ren’s found it, it’s what he’s always been afraid of. He had always known, in his heart, that they cared more for each other than they cared for him, but he had loved them so much he had convinced himself it didn’t matter. He had convinced himself that he belonged with them.

But where are they? Why don’t they come?

It’s better this way. They’re safe. They have each other. It’s what Poe wants for them.

_I’m alone._

_It’s dark and cold and I’m alone._

Poe tries to hold onto the knowledge that his fears aren’t real. Kylo Ren is getting inside his head and making him think things that aren’t true. Finn and Rey love him. They love him.

For a while, Poe tries to hang onto what’s important. He tries to hang onto hope, onto Finn and Rey, onto the belief that his friends might still come for him. It gets harder and harder. It gets harder to remember that he had a different reality from this, that he used to have a life he loved, with people who loved him. It gets harder to remember that there was anything but Kylo Ren.

It gets harder to see their faces. Finn and Rey. Their features have started to blur in his mind and sometimes he has to struggle to remember their names. He starts to think they were never real, that he’d made them up to stop himself from feeling so alone. How could he ever have had a life like that, with them? How could he have ever been somewhere else, where it wasn’t dark and cold, where people smiled at him and held his hand and loved him?

It must have been a dream.

Dreams don’t help him anymore. Kylo Ren is in his dreams, too.

He has no sense of time. He isn’t sure if time even passes in here, in this room. At first he measured time by Kylo Ren’s presence, by the moments he was there and the moments he wasn’t, but he can no longer tell when Ren is truly there and when he isn’t because he always seems to be in Poe’s head.

“Who are you?”

“Poe.”

Pain.

“Who are you?”

“Commander Poe Dameron.”

Pain.

“Who are you?”

“Black Leader.”

Pain.

“Who are you?”

“Poe Dameron, best pilot in the galaxy.”

Pain.

“Who are you?”

“Poe, I’m Poe.”

Pain.

“Who are you?”

“My name is… my name is Poe.”

Pain.

“Who are you?”

“…My name is...”

Pain.

“Who are you?”

“I’m no one.”

The pain stops.

He almost cries from the relief of it.

“Good,” Kylo Ren says. “We are finished for now.”

But they are never finished. Kylo Ren leaves, but when he closes his eyes, all he sees is that black mask.

There was a man, and there was a girl, and they loved him. They were fighting for him, they were coming for him.

But they aren’t. They haven’t come, and they never will, and why would they? He is no one, he’s a shell, he’s broken, he belongs to no one.

“Who are you?”

“No one. I’m no one.”

_Make it stop._

He is no one. He has always been no one. There was never anything but this.

He is no one, and he is Kylo Ren’s.

_Make it stop._

“Who are you?” Kylo Ren asks.

“I am no one. I am yours.”

“Good. That’s very good.”

The pain is gone.

-

Rey dreams of Poe.

They aren’t the dreams she wants them to be, the Force dreams that would tell her where Poe is, that he’s okay, but they aren’t what she fears, either. They don’t tell her he’s dead.

They’re just dreams.

Usually they are frustrating dreams. Poe is always just out of reach and no matter how hard she tries, she can never get to him. She hears his voice and she calls to him but he’s always running, running, running away from her, his smile a tease, and she just wants to hold him but he’s forever beyond her grasp. The symbolism is obvious. Rey hates her brain.

She wakes up and she is still reaching for him but he isn’t there; he’s never there.

She clings to Finn but it isn’t the same. She loves Finn, she’s loved him almost since she met him, she thinks, and maybe even before that, but he feels broken without Poe. Rey feels broken.

It’s funny. There had been a time when Rey thought she might only love Poe because of Finn.

She wonders if this would be easier if that had been true.

Rey sits on a hill outside the base and watches the ships return, coming back from a recon flight. It’s colder here than the last system, and Rey shivers in her thick coat. She wishes she’d been with them. It’s better when she’s busy. It gives her less time to think. She’s taken to bringing BB-8 with her on flights and she isn’t sure if it’s more a comfort to her or to the droid.

Someone sits beside her and she doesn’t need to look to know it’s Finn.

“I still think I’ll see him sometimes, that black X-wing in the lead,” Finn says. “I’m still surprised when I never do.”

Rey doesn’t trust herself to say anything.

From the tarmac, Karé sees them and gives them a wave. Rey raises her hand briefly and lets it fall.

“It’s cold,” Finn tries. “Come inside.”

“In a minute.”

“Rey--”

Rey makes herself smile at him, but she knows it must be weak and forced. She doesn’t think she’s really smiled in months. “Don’t worry about me, Finn. Just give me a minute.”

Finn hesitates. He doesn’t know what to do, Rey can see it in his face. He doesn’t know how to help her but why should he? He doesn’t even know how to help himself. It’s been months and Poe is still a hole in their lives, a gap they can’t fill and can’t cross. 

She didn’t think it would be this hard.

No. That’s a lie.

Rey takes Finn’s hand. “I need a minute, okay?”

“Okay,” Finn says. He squeezes her gloved hand and then leaves.

The problem, Rey knows, is that she can’t accept Poe is dead. He’s gone; she knows that every day. She looks out at the tarmac and he’s never there, he’s never climbing up into his cockpit, he’s never working on the engine of his T-70 in his old, worn pants, he’s never walking by in a crowd of laughing pilots.

He’s never in her bed, filling the empty space between her and Finn.

But while his absence stings, he still… Rey can’t accept that he’s dead. She knows what people would tell her, that it’s stubbornness, that it’s foolish optimism, that it’s willful refusal of the facts. She knows they would say it’s a lack of effort to face her grief. That all might be true.

All Rey knows is that in her heart, Poe doesn’t feel dead.

-

When he first came out of the restraints, he fell immediately to the floor. He wasn’t sure if his legs no longer worked or if he simply didn’t remember how, but regardless, he wasn’t strong enough to bear his own weight.

The two stormtroopers who had come to release him hauled him roughly to his feet and dragged him to the medbay.

He still wasn’t sure how to measure the passage of time, but he stayed there for a while. When they were done with him, his legs worked fine.

Afterwards he was drilled on weapons training, protocol, and various other aspects of life in the First Order. They cut his hair, gave him a black uniform, and installed him in a dormitory, where no one spoke to him.

He had no wish to speak to them, anyway.

Finally he is summoned before Kylo Ren once more. He straightens, hands clasped behind his back, eyes forward. He is Kylo Ren’s to command. Anything.

_Make it stop._

“Your designation is FN-2187,” Kylo Ren says, almost as if this amuses him in some way.

It somehow seems familiar but it doesn’t matter. His place is not to question. “Yes,” FN-2187 says, nodding.

“You will help me destroy the Resistance.”

The Resistance is the enemy of Supreme Leader Snoke and the First Order, the enemy of Kylo Ren. The Resistance is FN-2187’s enemy.

“As you command.”

“We have received intel that they will be attempting to retrieve supplies from a planet in a nearby system. You will be part of the attack force.”

Attack force. A ship. Yes. He will have a ship. “I understand.”

Kyo Ren turns away. “You will find General Hux on the main bridge. He will be waiting for you.”

FN-2187 understands when he is being dismissed. He salutes, though Kylo Ren cannot see him, and he departs.

He finds General Hux as he was ordered to, and listens to his orders.

“A pilot will instruct you on--”

“I can fly anything,” FN-2187 interrupts, the words almost a reflex. 

General Hux eyes him oddly but nods. “Very well. You depart in one hour.”

FN-2187 begins to leave, but stops at a word from Hux.

“FN-2187,” he says, as if the designation leaves a bad taste in his mouth. “Don’t be a disappointment. Kylo Ren is not the only one who can deliver pain.”

“Sir,” FN-2187 says, and salutes.

In one hour, FN-2187 sits in the cockpit of a TIE fighter. He has a sense that he’s been here before, but it’s fleeting and not worth thinking about. The ship comes to life beneath his fingers and he soars into space, and this -

Yes, _this._ This he knows. He can fly anything.

He moves into formation and beams off into hyperspace with the rest of the squadron.

-

Their force was small, just a few fighters to cover the freighter as it ventured dangerously into First Order space. General Organa wouldn’t have approved the risk if they hadn’t needed the bacta so desperately.

Rey flies alongside Jess and wonders whether their luck will hold. If they can just make it into hyperspace they’ll -

“Incoming,” Rey says, not needing the translated text on her console to know what BB-8 is telling her. “TIEs! It’s the First Order.”

“I see them, Blue Four. Attack positions!” Snap says.

Rey locks her S-foils into place, gently dipping the nose of her ship forward while it stabilizes. There are eight TIEs flying straight for them, and there’s one –

Rey gasps, feeling as though she’s been slammed into. It’s dark, and cold, and she can’t see, and she can’t move, and - Rey cries out, wheeling around just in time to avoid incoming fire. The TIE explodes, hit from behind.

“Report, Blue Four! What was that?”

“I’m sorry,” Rey says, shifting the stick forward. “Thanks for that.”

One of the TIE fighters soars over and circles around, blasting at the freighter’s shields. It won’t last long if they can’t take this guy out, he flies like – he flies like –

_Pain, in her head, everywhere, she’s alone, but someone’s in her head, he’s in her head –_

“Poe,” Rey says, and she knows.

She knows.

The pilot. It’s Poe.

BB-8 is asking her to repeat what she said, he’s asking why she’s talking about Poe, but Rey doesn’t answer. She takes out a fighter before it can encroach upon Blue Two, bringing her ship up in a vertical rise to avoid the explosion. Jerking to make herself a harder target, she zips around to follow the TIE she knows is being flown by Poe.

 _Everything’s empty and black and it_ hurts _–_

“Blue Four, keep that fighter in your sights!” Snap shouts. “Son of a bitch can really fly!”

 _You don’t have to tell me,_ Rey thinks, but she keeps that thought to herself. The freighter’s shields have begun to fail, and if it doesn’t get out soon, the mission will have been for nothing. 

Snap banks to the left, hitting another fighter dead on. BB-8 informs Rey that leaves only two.

One of them is Poe. He’s firing at her, and it’s wrong, and Rey can only make herself dodge the blasts. She can’t bring herself to exchange fire.

“Blue Three, are you ready to make the jump?” Snap asks.

“I’m ready,” Jess answers, her ship arcing overhead to shoot down another TIE. 

One left.

“Then go! We’ll come after you.”

“But--”

“You know the mission, Pava!”

Jess curses in a language Rey doesn’t recognize and then she’s gone, her ship blinking away. The damaged freighter follows.

“Blue Two, go!” Snap commands.

Then it’s him and Rey and Poe. Snap doesn’t know it’s Poe, and he won’t believe Rey if she tells him, and the two of them will kill each other if she doesn’t stop it. 

Rey moves straight for Poe, firing, and she manages to clip his left wing with an energy blast, not enough to destroy his ship but enough that he’s forced wide and has to retreat. Rey releases a breath she hadn’t known she was holding and punches into lightspeed.

 _Poe,_ she thinks, all the way back to base. _It was Poe._

Poe is alive. It hadn’t only been in her head. He’s alive. He was alive and they’d left him there and he was working for the First Order.

Rey’s head throbs with the memory of what she’d seen, the vision she’d sensed from Poe. What his life has become. Her eyes prick with tears and BB-8 chirps in concern.

“I’m all right,” she says. “I’m all right.”

But Poe isn’t. Poe isn’t all right.

Back at base, Rey practically vaults out of the cockpit, tearing off her helmet and flinging herself at Finn, waiting down below. “Poe!” she says breathlessly. “It was Poe!”

From near Rey’s shins, BB-8 breaks into a bout of excited beeping that Rey can’t deal with right now. 

Finn’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. “What? What are you talking about?”

“The TIE pilot! It was Poe!”

“Rey, that’s insane!”

But she grabs onto him. She has to make him see. “Finn, it was _Poe._ I would recognize the way he flies anywhere. And… I felt him, Finn. I felt him.”

Finn wavers in her grasp, like he might fall. “But he… He died, Rey, he died.”

“No, he didn’t. They took him, and he’s alive.”

“No,” Finn says, “No,” and he’s shaking his head. “No, it can’t… _Rey._ ”

Rey holds him and she says, “They’ve done something to him, Finn. They’ve done something to him but he’s alive, and we’re going to get him back. We’re going to get him back.”

She can sense Finn’s acceptance of it, in the way he shakes in her arms and won’t let go. 

“You all right?”

Rey looks up and sees Snap. His hair is plastered with sweat and she knows she can’t look any better.

“Fine,” she says. “You?”

He nods at her. “Last one got away.”

So Rey tells him. “I meant for him to. It was Poe.”

Snap looks at her like she’s crazy. “What?”

“It was Poe, and I’m going to tell General Organa it was. She has to know.”

Without waiting for Snap to reply, Rey turns toward the command center and starts running, pulling Finn along with her. BB-8 comes with, informing Rey almost shrilly that he is prepared to do anything to retrieve Poe.

“Rey!” Snap shouts after them. “Rey!”

Inside the base Jess is already in conversation with General Organa, her flight gloves still in her hands. “Rey!” she says, and hugs her.

“General,” Rey starts to say, releasing Jess, but stops as Snap, breathing quickly and stumbling to a halt, interrupts her. 

He says, “General, I think Rey needs to lie down.”

“I do not,” Rey says, glaring at him. “General, Poe is alive.”

General Organa narrows her eyes but otherwise doesn’t react. “I’m sorry?”

“He was there, with the First Order, flying one of the TIEs that intercepted us. It was Poe. He got away. I let him get away.”

General Organa’s gaze is sharp. “You’ve had a vision?”

“No, just… just pieces. Darkness and pain and…” _and Kylo Ren…“_ But it was him, I know it was. I could feel it.”

“I believe you. I wish I didn’t, but… I believe you.”

Snap is gaping at them both. Jess smacks him on the arm.

“We have to rescue him,” Finn says.

“How?” General Organa sounds weary more than anything else.

“We got Rey out of the Starkiller Base, didn’t we? We have to help him!”

“We don’t even know where to look. I appreciate--”

“No, I don’t care! How many of us here owe our lives to Poe Dameron? And you want us just to abandon him because it’ll be too hard?”

“I understand your anger, Finn,” General Organa says, not unkindly but with steel in her tone. “But no single man is more important than the Resistance. Poe understood that. He wouldn’t want us to risk everything just for him. And I’m afraid…” She looks away, gazing into the distance, as if into a memory. “If he was that fighter pilot, I’m afraid he isn’t Poe any longer.”

“That’s a load of druk,” Finn says, and storms out.

Rey follows him, because what else can she do? She follows him all the way back to their quarters, and watches him rage. She knows that he’s less angry at General Organa and more angry at himself. For not knowing, for not going after Poe months ago, for leaving him in the hands of the First Order. Finn blames himself for what’s happened to Poe.

Rey can sympathize. She had known Poe wasn’t dead, she’d _known._ She had left him anyway.

She’d left him.

“We’re not giving up on him!” Finn finally shouts.

“Of course we aren’t.”

Finn stops, confused momentarily as though he had been expecting another argument. “We aren’t?”

“Of course not. Why would we?”

“You don’t care about what the general said?”

“I think she was right, but I also don’t think that matters. It’s Poe.”

Finn seems to deflate, sinking down onto the bed. “I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for him. He would never give up on us.”

Rey wraps her arm around Finn’s shoulders and leans into him. “And we’ll never give up on him. No matter what it takes.”

They were going to find Poe and they were going to bring him home.

-

FN-2187 expects to be reprimanded for his failure in stopping the Resistance. The enemy was able to retreat into hyperspace, all of them, fleeing to their base with the supplies they had come for. An embarrassing failure for which FN-2187 is the only one left standing to blame.

Kylo Ren is angry, FN-2187 knows, but he doesn’t shout. It looks as though he’s been using his lightsaber, crashing through electronics, but he doesn’t shout.

He says, “Normally after such a failure our pilots don’t return.”

“Should I have--”

“No,” Ren interrupts. “It makes an improvement. You’re better than the rest of them, no matter what Hux says. You will be an asset.”

FN-2187 is surprised at Kylo Ren’s lenience but he has no desire to further test his patience. “I am here to serve you.”

“Yes, you are. And you will.”

It almost sounds like a threat.

FN-2187 knows that’s because it is a threat.

-

Though Rey and Finn never discuss their intentions with anyone in the Resistance, they receive a lot of covert assistance anyway. Rey supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. Jess, Karé, Iolo, Snap, and so many others surreptitiously offer their help. They run reconnaissance flights and they keep their ears to the ground wherever they are, searching for anything that might lead to Poe’s whereabouts, or news of his situation. BB-8 scours databanks, his single-minded purpose a clear devotion to the man who was his master.

Rey thinks that General Organa must know. She must, but she doesn’t try to stop them.

Their biggest asset in the search is that they’re searching for Poe. First Order or not, no one else in the galaxy flies quite like Poe Dameron. Stories of the First Order’s clever, daring new pilot are everywhere. It makes his movements easier to trace than they might otherwise have been.

This is less advantageous to the efforts of the Resistance in their fight against the First Order, as well as to the state of Poe’s mental health when they get him back, Rey knows. Poe has killed people. He’s killed pilots in the Resistance that he knew, that he flew with, that he shared meals with.

Rey is trying not to think about that.

“You know it isn’t your fault,” Jess says to Rey once, while they wait for news from Iolo. “What happened. It isn’t your fault.”

“I left him there.”

“We all did.”

“But I _knew._ I knew he wasn’t dead. I should never have given up.”

“You haven’t. We will find him, Rey. He’s got the best the Resistance has on the job; who could ask for anything more?”

“I’m… I’m afraid of what we’ll find,” Rey admits. “I’m afraid.” 

These are the words she can never say to Finn, who has thrown his entire being into bringing Poe home. Losing him once had nearly broken Finn. She doesn’t know what will happen if Poe himself is too broken for recovery. Even if they find him, who will he be? What if Poe is truly lost?

What if General Organa is right? What if Poe is gone, in everything but the physical existence of his life?

Jess squeezes Rey’s shoulder and doesn’t try to speak. Rey is grateful. 

-

FN-2187 stands before Kylo Ren, his uniform freshly cleaned and pressed, his hair neatly combed.

“You have done well in the service of Supreme Leader Snoke,” Kylo Ren says, as though he is stating a fact rather than delivering a compliment. Kylo Ren does not issue compliments. “The Resistance has no pilot that can match your skill.”

_Best pilot in the galaxy._

“I aim to do what is asked of me.”

“Yes. Yes, you do. You will do something else for me, FN-2187.”

“Yes,” FN-2187 says. 

_I am no one. I am yours._

“There is a girl in the Resistance. She has become a nuisance. You will eliminate her.”

A girl? FN-2187 is a pilot, not an assassin. He is somewhat puzzled but he knows he is meant for only one task – whatever Kylo Ren asks of him. “I will eliminate her.”

“She has a companion. A traitor, once one of ours. You will eliminate him as well.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Good,” Kylo Ren says. “Very good.”

The girl has the Force, Kylo Ren informs FN-2187. She is not to be underestimated, but her weakness is her devotion to the light. Her devotion to the traitor.

Weakness, FN-2187 knows. It is weakness to rely on others. Weakness to let them rely on you.

_Alone. He’s always been alone._

_No one is coming._

He will eliminate them.

-

They’ve created a map to contain all the information they’ve gathered about Poe and the First Order. BB-8 projects it regularly within their quarters so Rey and Finn can pore over it. They’ve narrowed down the probability of his location to just a handful of systems but…

And then she knows.

Rey is staring at the map, lying on her back on the bed with the stars all around her, and then she knows.

She can’t explain it. She just looks up and she knows where Poe is. She can _feel_ it. She closes her eyes and she can see the inside of a room, a dormitory, stark and military. She is surrounded by people but she is alone. 

_It’s dark and cold and I am alone and I am no one -_

“He’s there,” Rey says, holding up her hand and pointing.

BB-8 starts chattering in anticipation.

Finn sits down on the bed, looking at where Rey is pointing. “How can you be sure?”

“Because I know. I just… I know. I can feel it.”

Finn has learned by now not to question Rey’s feelings. “Okay,” he says. “When do we leave?”

-

When FN-2187 enters Kylo Ren’s personal quarters, he walks into an argument between Ren and General Hux. They stop as he comes in, Hux’s pale cheeks flushed in anger.

“Good, FN-2187,” Kylo Ren says. “We have had reports of an unidentified shuttle coming out of hyperspace in this quadrant.” He pauses as if he is curious whether this will mean something to FN-2187.

It doesn’t.

“I believe it to be piloted by the girl and the traitor.”

FN-2187 straightens even further into attention. He doesn’t ask what has made Kylo Ren draw this conclusion. “What would you have me do?”

“Take a ship. Find them. Kill them.”

General Hux can remain silent no longer. “Why risk it?” he asks furiously. “Let me send an entire squadron after them!”

“There is no need,” Kylo Ren says. “FN-2187 will deal with them.”

“Your recklessness and overconfidence will be the undoing of us all,” General Hux fumes. “You have learned nothing!” He storms out.

“I will eliminate them,” FN-2187 says.

_I am no one. I am yours._

-

Rey and Finn don’t make their intent to go after Poe a secret. General Organa can’t stop them from leaving. They have no rank and the Resistance has no official hold over them.

Rey doesn’t really think the general would have tried to stop them, anyway. She thinks Leia understands, even if she can’t condone using Resistance resources to help them.

General Organa goes to Rey and presses a datapad into her hand.

“Oh, stars,” Rey breathes as she looks at it. General Organa’s found them a First Order ship, one they can use to get to Poe. Rey hugs Leia and says, “Thank you!”

The general’s eyes are sad but she says, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Rey knows what they’ll find. Poe. He’ll come back to them. She has to believe that.

BB-8 fights with her when she insists he can’t come with them. “It’s too dangerous,” she tells him. “Poe would never forgive me if I let something happen to you.”

He angrily tells her that he doesn’t care, that he must help Poe, and that Poe wouldn’t want her or Finn to be hurt either, so what’s the difference?

“We’ll be fine,” Rey says. “We’ll bring him back, and everything will be all right.”

When BB-8 continues to express concern, she says, “I know. But I promise everything will work out. You stay here and help the Resistance while we’re gone. It’s what Poe would want.”

His irritated chattering would indicate even to Finn that BB-8 is unimpressed with her logic and thinks she’s being unfair, but eventually he furiously rolls off. But not too far – Rey can see him hiding just a little ways away, watching them as they get ready to leave.

Karé and Iolo are away on a mission and Rey is sorry for it. They’re Poe’s oldest friends and she wishes she could see them before she goes, tell them that no force in the galaxy will stop her from retrieving Poe. Only the knowledge that when she next sees them she’ll have Poe with her consoles her.

Jess hugs Rey tightly and says, “Bring him back, okay? Take care of yourselves, and bring him back.”

“I will,” Rey promises. 

She settles into the pilot’s seat in the _Millennium Falcon,_ with Finn as her copilot. He can’t fly but he’s good at doing what she tells him to, and he keeps his head in a crisis. (Chewie was suitably horrified, but Chewie has a hard time telling Rey ‘no’. She had learned that very early on in their search for Luke.)

Rey and Finn don’t talk much during the flight. Finn is trying too hard to keep his nerves at bay, and every so often he mumbles aloud, something in the vein of, “This is gonna be fine. We’re gonna be fine. Poe is fine. We’re gonna get him back. Just another crazy adventure; they always turn out fine. We can do this.” 

Rey is simply focused. She keeps the thought of Poe in the back of her mind, to center herself. They’re going to make this right.

They take a detour to meet General Organa’s contact, to obtain use of a shuttle that had a better chance of getting them to Poe undetected than the _Falcon_ , or indeed, any ship the Resistance had use of. Rey doesn’t like leaving the _Falcon_ but she supposes there are more difficult tasks ahead of her.

They come out of lightspeed on the edges of the system, near a rocky planet. They’re still some way away from where the First Order must be. 

Rey knows how insane this is. She knows they haven’t thought it through. She had been so afraid of losing Poe once again, of letting him slip through her fingers, that she had raced ahead without thought. Somehow simply finding Poe had seemed the integral part, and she’d had a vague feeling that the rest would fall into place.

Except, of course, life tends not to work like that. She doesn’t actually know how to get Poe off of a Star Destroyer and out of the hands of Kylo Ren. They have stolen stormtrooper uniforms and identification that Finn keeps staring at with horror and she doesn’t even know if any of it will pass muster. Can they actually get themselves on board? Should they have taken the _Falcon_ and just tried hiding beneath the floorboards, as Luke had told them he’d done with Han back on the original Death Star? The risk that the First Order would simply shoot the ship as soon as it was in range had seemed too great, but now she wonders.

She wonders if Kylo Ren himself will be there. She wonders if his presence might help her. Will he be able to sense her, as she sometimes wondered if he could? Can she use his hatred of her to her own advantage?

“Do we actually have a plan?” Finn asks, staring through the viewport.

“Do we ever?”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

Rey kisses Finn, one hand at the back of his neck. “We’re going to find him and we’re going to get him back. No matter what it takes.”

Finn’s face is set in determination. “No matter what it takes.”

In the end, Poe finds them first.

-

Finding the shuttle is easy. It’s just where the First Order sensors had said it would be, moving at an easy clip towards the _Finalizer_. FN-2187 can’t figure out what the girl and the traitor, if they are indeed the pilots, are trying to accomplish. What could two people and one small ship possibly do against the might of Kylo Ren and the First Order?

He fires at them but they’ve seen him; whoever’s piloting is good; he’ll give them that at least. The ship zips out of range of his fire and they begin a bit of a cat and mouse chase. He has a sense that he’s done this before. He wonders if he’s faced this pilot before. Perhaps this was the one that shot him, back during his first outing for the First Order.

Kylo Ren had said the girl was a fair pilot. It must be her.

In any case, it doesn’t matter. Good pilot or not, she’s flying a shuttle. He’s in a TIE fighter. He banks left as she’s trying to come around back toward the nearby planet, likely in an attempt to escape, and he hits her ship dead-on.

It plummets toward the planet’s surface.

The voice that issues from his communication system is Ren’s. “The ship is disabled, not destroyed. Go after them. Kill them.”

“Yes,” FN-2187 says.

_I will eliminate them._

There is too much cover on the planet for him to get a good read on the fallen ship’s location, too much cover for him to see them from the air. So he sets down in the general vicinity of their projected crash site and moves out on foot, discarding his uncomfortable helmet in the ship.

It doesn’t take him long to see the smoke, and from there it’s easy.

He finds them cowering by a boulder nearby the wreckage of their ship, the traitor on his back with the girl leaning over him. She’s thumping on his chest and then she presses her lips to his, breathing for him, but for a moment it looks like – he thinks – It’s like a flash of memory, the image so familiar, hiding somewhere behind his eyes, but then the traitor jerks into motion, and the image is gone.

“Finn,” the girl is crying, “Finn, are you okay?”

But the traitor is looking beyond her and it’s too late. “Poe!” he shouts. 

FN-2187 raises his blaster but the traitor has already scrambled for his. He fires, his aim wildly off, whether from intent or his injury FN-2187 can’t guess. 

FN-2187 shoots at the two figures but the girl, alerted by the traitor, has picked up her lightsaber and fends the blaster fire off. Then she raises her hand and FN-2187 is frozen in place.

He finds himself smiling even as he struggles. “He said there was darkness in you, but that you were too afraid to use it. I see he was only half right.”

The girl shudders and FN-2187 regains control of his limbs. His fingers twitch on the trigger of his blaster but he lets it stay by his side.

The traitor struggles upright, moving to stand beside the girl, his blaster in his hand. The girl keeps her lightsaber, poised and ready. “Don’t make me hurt you,” she pleads.

“Poe,” the traitor says. “Poe, please.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“It’s you, that’s your name,” the girl says. “Poe Dameron, best pilot in the galaxy.” She says it like it means something, like it’s some special, fond joke. “I’m Rey, this is Finn, and you’re Poe.”

Their names… But their names don’t matter. “I am FN-2187.”

The traitor flinches. “No, you aren’t,” he says, a fierceness in his tone. “FN-2187 is dead, and he’s dead because of you. You called me Finn, and your name is Poe. Your name is Poe and we love you.”

FN-2187 starts laughing. “Love is meaningless. Love is weakness.”

“Did Kylo Ren tell you that?” the girl asks. “He only says it because he can’t love anyone, because he’s alone. But you aren’t.”

 _No,_ he thinks. He is alone. He’d always been alone, and it was always dark, and it _hurt,_ and no one ever came. No one ever came even though… even though…

“I’m no one,” he mutters to himself. “I’m no one.”

_There was a man, and there was a girl, and they loved him._

_Make it stop._

No one ever came, because there never was anyone, and he was always alone, and he was always broken. He is no one.

“Poe,” the traitor says, and starts to move closer.

FN-2187 fires before either of them can react, hitting the traitor in his shoulder. He knows he should have aimed to kill. He knows he can never return to Kylo Ren after this, after such a deliberate failure. He should kill them while he still has the chance.

_I’m no one. I’m yours._

_Make it stop._

_There was a man, and there was a girl, and they loved him._

He runs. 

-

Rey watches Poe as he starts to run but then she’s kneeling on the ground, leaning over Finn. “Finn!”

He pushes her away. “No! Go after him, go! Rey, I’m fine; you have to stop him. Please, Rey, it’s _Poe._ You have to find him. I’ll be fine, I’ll follow you, _go._ ”

Desperately she looks at him but Finn begs, “ _Please._ ”

So Rey runs.

She catches him before he can scramble up the hill to his TIE fighter. “Poe!” she shouts, and his gaze is wild. He raises his blaster but Rey raises her hand.

“Be still,” Rey commands, and Poe is. 

She hates herself for it.

Rey walks slowly towards him and then stops, a foot away. He’s struggling, trying to move, like an insect pinned to a board. She knows how that feels.

“Just leave me,” Poe says. “I’m no one.”

“You’re Poe,” she tells him. “You’re everything. You’re ours.”

“I’m no one,” he repeats, like it’s something he’s said often. “I was never anyone and no one ever came.”

A sob catches in Rey’s throat because she did this. She did this to him. He was alive and she knew it and she left him. Rey knows all too well how it feels to be left behind, to tell yourself they’ll come back for you when in your heart you know they never will. That’s what she did to Poe.

“You’re Poe Dameron,” she says. “You’re Poe, and I love you. We love you, Poe. We love you. Please.”

“No. I’m no one. I’m FN-2187; it’s the only name he ever gave me. It made the pain stop. It made it stop.”

Rey moves closer. She looks into Poe’s eyes and she can’t see him. It’s like he’s empty, like everything that made him Poe was torn out and he’s just a shell, a shell filled with fear and anguish.

After what Kylo Ren did to her, Rey had made a vow to never touch the mind of anyone she cared about. She had vowed she would never be party to that sort of intrusion, that sort of pain.

She holds Poe’s face in her hands and goes into his head.

She reels from the agony of it, the loneliness, the hopelessness, the desolation, the _pain._ Tears are rolling down her cheeks but she can’t stop, not now. 

She feels death and misery and through it all, Kylo Ren. She can’t see Poe, not anywhere, just the man they turned him into, and Rey is afraid to push harder. She’s afraid of hurting him, of breaking him, but then she thinks, _he’s already broken._ They unmade him and he can’t be broken any more than he already is, and then suddenly -

 _There._ Flying, he’s flying, and it’s pure, unbridled joy, and there he is. There’s Poe.

Rey clings to that and delves deeper, and he’s a little boy, sitting on a woman’s lap in a cramped cockpit, laughing, and then he’s reaching up to the touch the nose of a ship in the purest heartbreak Rey has ever felt, and then he’s a young man, standing next to a fighter that’s _his,_ and then he’s shouting, “Muran!” and a ship explodes.

Rey feels like an intruder, a voyeur, but she knows she can’t stop.

He’s in a cell, fighting against pain and a wave of depression, and a stormtrooper comes in, but when he removes the mask it’s Finn underneath, and Poe’s fear and confusion turn to hope, and he says, “We’re gonna do this,” and then he’s running, he’s running into Finn’s arms and his happiness feels like a real, tangible thing. He’s running again, after a med cart, and he’s afraid, and then he isn’t, and then Rey sees herself, sees herself as Poe sees her, and they’re hugging, and she says, “I’m Rey,” and she’s smiling, and the flashes get faster and faster, he’s kissing Finn, he’s holding Rey, he’s watching them, he’s laughing, he’s flying, flying, flying -

And then it stops, settles, and he’s lying in bed, all three of them curled together, and he’s not quite asleep, but on the edge of it, and he’s thinking, _this, can I just have this, can I keep you, stay with me, please, always, this, don’t leave me, please, I love you I love you I love you -_

Rey comes out of it with a gasp. 

She looks in Poe’s familiar warm brown eyes and all she can see is _Poe._ She’s crying and Poe’s face is wet but she smiles, because it’s Poe.

It’s Poe.

“Rey,” Poe says, his voice hoarse, and he hugs her, and they end up on the ground because Poe’s balance wavers and Rey feels too unsteady to even try to keep them upright. “Rey,” he says, “Rey,” and clings to her, his face pressed into her neck. He feels warm and solid like he always used to.

Rey feels the light touch of Finn’s hand on her shoulder and she turns her head to see him crouching down beside them, his other hand clutching Poe’s arm.

Poe draws back only enough to look at Finn. “I shot you,” he says, sounding horrified, touching his hand to the blood on Finn’s jacket. “I shot you! Finn, I’m so sorry, I…”

“It’s okay, I’m all right,” Finn says. He doesn’t quite look it, an ashy tinge to his face, but he’s holding onto Poe like he plans on never letting go again.

“You remember what happened?” Rey asks.

“I remember everything,” Poe says, haunted. “I remember everything, and it’s not okay. It’s not okay. Kriff, it’s not okay,” he says, taking a deep, shaky breath. But he gets to his feet, moving away from their touch. “We can deal with that later. We can’t stay here. Ren is waiting for confirmation of your deaths-- he’ll only wait so long.”

Knowing he’s right, Rey gets up, too, and offers her hand to Finn. “The shuttle’s too damaged. We won’t be able to repair it.”

“And even if we could all fit in my TIE fighter, they’d be able to track us too easily. We need to find the nearest settlement; get transport.” Poe looks to Finn, guilt in his eyes. “We need to fix your shoulder, too.”

“We’ll worry about that later,” Finn says as they start walking. “I’m more concerned about not dying. The shoulder won’t kill me, but the troopers Ren sends here to finish the job definitely will.”

-

Poe is pretty sure it’s a miracle that they make it off the planet before the First Order finds them. He thinks that’s probably fair. They deserved a miracle.

By design they don’t even attempt to go straight to the _Millennium Falcon._ Poe is afraid the First Order will try to track them so they make an effort to lose themselves in the tide of travelers moving from world to world, and take an indirect route to the _Falcon._

Finn gets his shoulder treated, cleaned and bound. He hit his head in the crash but there doesn’t seem to be any lasting damage. Poe insists that Rey gets looked at, too, but aside from some bruising she’s okay.

Poe gets rid of the uniform the first chance he gets. He can’t bear the feel of it against his skin; it makes him feel dirty. He can’t change what he’s done but he can shed the physical reminders, at least. 

There’s a moment, after, when he looks at his face in the mirror, where he nearly breaks down. He _killed_ people, innocent, good people. He shot down Resistance ships in the name of the First Order. He probably murdered people he had called friends. He’s too afraid to ask Rey and Finn to tell him, to tell him who died. He can’t. He can’t do it.

He nearly killed them. He nearly killed Rey and Finn.

He looks at himself in the mirror and he doesn’t know who’s looking back at him.

_My name is Poe. My name is Poe._

“My name is Poe,” he says to the face in the mirror. “My name is Poe.”

Someone carefully knocks on the door. “Poe?” Finn says. “Poe, do you need anything? Do you need someone to help you?”

_There was a man, and there was a girl, and they loved him._

“My name is Poe,” he whispers, and throws the uniform into the trash. 

They spend the night in a room with two beds, and Poe takes one for himself. He doesn’t think he can – It’s better if he has space. It’s better.

_It was dark and he was alone._

He can tell that Finn and Rey don’t know what to do. They look at him with wide, anxious eyes and they hover, reaching sometimes but stopping before they touch. They talk in soft, gentle voices. Poe feels like a scared dog they found abandoned somewhere, like they’re waiting to see if he’ll bite. 

Part of him wants to cling to them and never let go. Part of him can’t even bear to look them in the eyes. Part of him wants to curl up in a ball and cry.

Poe lies on his back on the bed in the dark and can’t sleep.

His mind won’t be quiet but he’s too terrified to sleep anyway. He’s afraid of what he’ll see when he closes his eyes. He’s afraid of the darkness.

Eventually he gets up, thinking that he’ll go outside and look up at the stars. He hopes that might relax him.

As he stands, though, he realizes that no one in the room is actually sleeping.

“Poe?” Rey says, sitting up. The blanket has fallen around her waist and Finn is leaning on an elbow beside her. The image they present is so achingly familiar and yet horrifyingly strange, something he thought he’d never have again, Finn and Rey in his bed, in his arms, something he’d convinced himself had never been real to begin with, and for a second Poe feels like he can’t breathe. 

_I’m alone I’m alone I’m alone -_

Poe swallows. “I wanted--” He doesn’t know what he wanted. He doesn’t know what he wants.

Rey gets out of bed and she moves to hug him but Poe flinches back and she stops, eyes filled with hurt and guilt and concern. Finn rests his hand at the center of her back and they stand there in front of him, lined in the dim moonlight coming through the window.

Rey speaks first. “I need to apologize. I should have found you.”

“You did find me.”

“I left you there,” Rey says, a wet sheen to her eyes. “I _left_ you there. I left you with him.”

“Because I made you,” Finn says. “You were right, and I wouldn’t listen. I’m so sorry, Poe.”

_He was alone and no one was coming._

“No,” Poe says. “No. None of this was your fault.”

They’re both watching him and Poe wants to tell them they were being smart, they were being rational, and he’d never expected them to come. He never would have wanted them to get hurt in a reckless attempt to save him.

But he still remembers what it was like, and he remembers the hope dying inside of him. He doesn’t blame them; he could never, ever blame them. But the irrational core of his mind, of his heart, remembers how it felt when he finally, truly realized that no one was coming.

_Make it stop._

“You’re here now,” he says. “That’s what matters.”

He tries to make himself smile but it feels brittle. He wonders if they shouldn’t have left him, after all. Maybe he doesn’t deserve to have this, not after… after. 

But he doesn’t really think that. If they’d left him then he’d just have continued to do Kylo Ren’s bidding, and he would rather be dead than for that to have been his life. Maybe they should have killed him. 

Except none of it feels right in his head, because he doesn’t want to die, and he certainly doesn’t want Finn or Rey to have to live with the burden of killing him. Maybe it’s selfish but he wants to be here, with them, because nothing in his life feels more right than that.

_There was a man and there was a girl –_

Rey holds out her hand, reaching towards Poe’s face, and then she stops, hesitates. “Can I?”

Poe nods.

She touches him, her fingers moving lightly over Poe’s skin, over his mouth. “I missed your smile,” she says, almost absently, biting her lip. “I know… I know it’s not okay. None of it is okay. But it will be. Let us help you, Poe. Tell me what you need. Tell me how we can help you.”

Poe looks from Rey to Finn where he’s anxiously watching and back to Rey again. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t know what I need. I think… I think I just need…” He bows his head, and he wants – He wants –

Rey puts her arms around him, and Poe doesn’t flinch back this time. He lets her hold him, standing stiffly in her grasp, and she says, “We love you. You believe that, don’t you?”

Poe remembers everything. He remembers the darkness, and the despair, and the pain. He remembers the crushing loneliness. He remembers Kylo Ren in his head. He remembers what he did to make it stop, and he remembers what he did afterwards. He remembers the people he hurt.

But he remembers _everything._ He remembers flying with his squadron and he remembers releasing energy blast after energy blast into the containment center of the most horrifying weapon anyone had ever conceived of until it was destroyed. He remembers a stormtrooper who broke him out of a cell and he remembers a young woman with a pretty smile and steel in her grip. He remembers Finn. He remembers Rey.

He remembers himself.

Commander Poe Dameron, Black Leader, best pilot in the Resistance. Best pilot in the galaxy, or so they used to say.

He remembers.

Poe raises his arms and he hugs Rey back. He releases a shuddering breath as Finn wraps his arms around them both. “I do,” he says. “I do.”

It’s not okay. Poe isn’t okay. But he thinks he can be. He will be.

_There is a man, and there is a girl, and they love him._

_My name is Poe._

**_End_ **

**Author's Note:**

> There you go, the Word doc that I titled Winter Soldier!Poe, haha, for lack of any better way to think of it. If you're curious, in my head, Poe was Bucky, Rey was Steve, and Finn was Sam. If Bucky, Steve, and Sam were all sleeping together. Though, hey, maybe they are, what do I know? *g*


End file.
